this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2023
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Their actual history. Past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior.
That's not an ethical argument. That's a heuristic based on an ad hominem. It's not that I disagree that they have a history of unethical behaviour but that doesn't mean every act they perform is tainted with being unethical. You have to make the actual argument.
It's not just one behavior, it's a continuous pattern of behavior. If you want to give them a clean slate in every new instance, that's your choice. At some point it's the scorpion and the frog. Whether you consider it an ethical argument or not, it's basic common sense that Meta's pattern of behavior will continue absent any evidence to the contrary.
And ad hominem is an argument against a person, not a company. My argument is citing their past behavior which would not be an ad hominem argument even if I'd cited Zuckerberg specifically. "Because Zuck is greedy." would be ad hominem.
Whether or not an action is ethical should be completely independent of who is doing it, all else being equal. That's not an ethical argument and so it doesn't answer the specific question I am asking.